Many flyers wind-surf with V911's because you can try anything with a V911, not fearing a damaging crash - worst case, $20 V911 BNF, just buy another one and use the old one for parts. If you are afraid to crash, then don't wind-surf.

Start by not using ailerons. Rudder is much quicker.

Apply full forward trim to keep the nose from coming up too high, and fly low, to avoid letting the wind get it.

Practice hovering nose into the wind . Push the nose down and apply throttle to hold position or to move forward.

To gain forward speed when nothing else works, turn to the side and fly a crosswind zigzag pattern.

Practice nose-left (counter-clockwise) circles to fly around and nose dive into the wind again. Ease up on the nose and bank one way or the other into the oncoming wind. Nose-right circles may be faster but harder to control (recover) after you get downwind.

Lots of practice. In calm or little wind, practice nose-left circles: Nose down to get forward motion, then full left aileron followed by small amount of left rudder, then aileron neutral, gets smooth banked wide circles. Use rudder to control diameter and throttle to maintain altitude, or allow the helicopter to dive close to the ground under the wind.

Forgot to mention that you always keep moving, crosswind zigzag, or circling back. Zigzag picks up speed when you turn. Circling back picks up speed downwind after turning into the wind and diving into the wind head-on. The fun part is at the end of a speed run where you bring up the nose just enough to either float on the wind or bank and circle back. Normally, the only way to get headway is to make the turns.

Figure eights also work well crosswind with the ends of both circles turning into the wind after the turn increases speed. At both ends bring up the nose and bank off the oncoming wind to dive towards the center of the eight.

If you let the wind or gusts push you back, there usually is no return. If you bring up the nose too high, there usually is no return. The excitement is making sure the helicopter does not float away,

Wind surfing - Keep the nose down (so wind does not blow V911 away). Keep the nose down by always moving forward. Always move forward by doing large circles. Now, that means clockwise circles (CW) or counter-clockwise circles (CCW). For CW circles, the tail motor is constantly running more (faster). For CCW circles, the tail motor is constantly running less (slower, or even stops running). To increase flight time, always circle CCW (left turns viewed from tail). Tail motor uses about 30% of battery power and better to run tail motor less (circle CCW) rather than more (circle CW).

My back yard is unusual. Rarely calm (boring) when there is no wind. I fly in a box, roughly 25 x 25 x 25 feet. The houses and bushes create an eddy (whirlwind) on the outer edges of the box. Close in, the wind moves left to right. Farthest out, the wind moves right to left. Ten feet beyond the box, there is an updraft where the challenge is to float the V911 with hardly any throttle and flight time easily doubles, but the danger is a risk of having the helicopter float off site, too high in a cross-wind.